


It's Just Emotions Taking Me Over

by BlackLoisLane



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26972707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackLoisLane/pseuds/BlackLoisLane
Summary: Dick tries to help Kory when she's attacked with fear toxin
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Koriand'r
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48





	It's Just Emotions Taking Me Over

**Author's Note:**

> Self promo time! After reading, if you enjoy this story or have enjoyed my others, I hope you take the time to check out my upcoming novel, South. It's available for preorder on Amazon and the Barnes and Noble website, and your support of this book, which is so close to my heart, would absolutely mean the world to me. 
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/South-Thera-D-Pitts-ebook/dp/B08HX9TBF5
> 
> https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/south-thera-d-pitts/1137648596?ean=9780578726052
> 
> Okay, enough of that. Thanks in advance, and enjoy!

Her scream is piercing, bone-rattling, heartbreaking. He hears it from all the way across the lair. They infiltrated this old, retrofitted warehouse to find Jason, to bring him back to himself before it’s too late. But it may be too late for someone else now. The fear toxin is in her and there’s no telling what damage it can do if he can’t get to her in time. 

He forgets everything, forgets his number one mission, forgets about the others, and runs toward Kory’s intense screams as fast as he can. This is what he was afraid of the first time he realized her powers had left her. It never would have happened had they been intact. She could have blocked it. And although she’s still one of the best and cleverest fighters on the team, she wouldn’t hurt Jason. 

Kory, his kind, compassionate warrior, so convinced that Crane getting his hooks and his drugs into Jason wasn’t the boy’s fault. And now, she may die by his hand unless Dick can stop it. 

She’s on the ground by the time he gets to her. She’s alone, convulsing and writhing on the cold, concrete floor, seeing something that he can’t. Jason has fled, and Dick grits his teeth in anger at his wayward charge as he falls to Kory’s side.

He understands nothing she says in her flailing, shrieking horror. The only word he recognizes is “Komand’r,” because she mutters it in her sleep enough for him to know that it’s a thing. Who or what Komand’r is, Kory hasn’t disclosed yet, all he knows is that the fear toxin has zeroed in on it bigtime. 

He moves closer, careful not to get hit. No such luck, the second Kory spots him in the corner of her eye, her fist lands solidly into his jaw. She jerks back from him and against the wall, yelling her mysterious alien language, her eyes frenzied and flooded with tears. He shakes off the hit as well as he can, and swallows hard, trying to keep a cool head in spite of his racing heart.

“Kory,” he says, too lowly to be heard through her anguished screams. And he starts again, inching forward, little by little, his hand creeping toward an escrima stick. But just then, before he can touch her, something happens that he hasn’t seen in months. The deep sea green of her eyes transforms into that beautiful but deadly neon glow, and her skin begins to crackle with light. He only has one move, and it needs to be perfect or she’ll turn him into a pile of ash.

“Dick, no!” Dawn’s voice bellows behind him, he knew it wouldn’t be long before the others caught up, but he pays no one any mind but Kory, grabbing her tight around her jerking shoulders. He expects her glowing skin to be painfully hot against him, but it isn’t, she just feels like Kory. The same woman he’s held and touched so many times before, but never for reasons of violence. 

The only difference now is that he can barely contain her desperate thrashing. No more hesitating, it has to be now.

“I’m so sorry,” Dick cries, then without another second of thought, he presses the end of his electrified weapon against the side of her neck. She’s abruptly silenced at the contact, her body and vocal cords seized by the blue voltage now coursing through her. And he hates it, he hates hurting her. Thankfully, it’s only a few more seconds before her fire subsides and her eyes go dim again. When it’s over, she looks up at his face with so much confusion, pain and fear in her eyes that his own begin to slightly mist over.

“Is Kory okay?” Connor says, worry for his friend shaking his voice. Dick looks up at his team, then back down at his girl before she goes limp in his arms, finally resting.

“She will be,” Dick says.

**** 

Back at Wayne manor, Kory lays in the infirmary, still sleeping off the trauma of the mission. It had been for nothing. Jason was still gone, and Kory had been through something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. He knows the sort of terrors one sees on Crane's toxin. He'd been the victim of it himself as a younger man. It can feel like dying over and over again, without the peace or absolution. Just the pain, and the dread, and the wishing like hell that it would end. So he sits with her, waiting for her to wake up to a face that she trusts. His chin is resting in his hand as he stares at her sleeping form. There’s simply nothing else to do. If he falls asleep then it will be right here in this room.

“Hey,” Says Dawn, who’s appeared by his side with a cup of steaming coffee. “I thought this might make the waiting a little easier.”

He takes it and thanks her, and she takes the seat next to him.

“How did you know?” she asks after a long silence.

“Know what?”

“That touching her wouldn’t burn you?”

He thinks about it again. Her clothes never burn, her pink nail polish remains perfect on her fingernails, her jewelry doesn’t melt into liquid gold, the idea that there may have been some sort of protection around her that might apply to him when he touched her body was a flimsy one, but it was all he had to go on if he was going to save her life back there.

“I didn’t,” he admits. He takes a sip of his coffee, black, with a single spoon of sugar to take the edge off, just how he likes it. But it does little to ease his mind.

“Hey,” Dawn says, a hand reaching his shoulder. “She’s going to be okay.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s just…”

“What?”

“It wasn’t just this one mission,” he says. “Something’s wrong and she won’t talk to me. Something’s been wrong for months.” 

Dawn nods in agreement. And they both watch Kory as she sleeps, her chest slowly rising and falling, her red curls cascading across the pillows.

“She’s really quite beautiful,” Dawn says, and he agrees without a second thought, making her chuckle.

“What?” he says, taking his eyes off of Kory and looking at Dawn, the amused smirk on her face.

“You have feelings for her, don’t you?”

“Dawn…” he says in frustration, looking away again, not wanting to have this talk even a little.

“What? I see the way you look at her, do you really think I don’t know? That the whole team doesn’t know?”

He scrubs a hand over his forehead. “It’s complicated.”

“No, I don’t think it’s complicated. I think it’s really, very simple.”

They’re quiet again. He won’t confirm Dawn’s suspicions, but he doesn’t deny them either. Because it is true, and it is simple. He’s had feelings for Kory as long as he’s known her, and they’re only getting stronger. And if she doesn’t talk to him about what’s going on he might just lose it.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Dawn says, those traces of humor at his expense still in her voice, and she goes.

Before long, in spite of the coffee, he begins to nod off. It’s been too long since he’s slept. He’s better now, isn’t he? At being a good leader, a good friend, a good… whatever he is to Kory. And yet, Jason is still gone, still fighting them at every chance, Rachel is still with Donna in Themyscira, helping her adjust to the trauma of death and resurrection, and Kory is still hiding something. For all of these reasons he hasn’t slept a full night in three months.

He only comes to again when Kory starts to stir and sigh, at that, he’s wide awake and standing to join her next to the bed.

“Hey,” he says in a soft voice.

“Hey,” she says back with a warm, sleepy simper. “What happened?”

“You had fear toxin in you, but it’s okay. You’re okay now.”

She nods, but then screws up her face as she recalls something. “Did you taze me Grayson?”

He cringes from the guilt, “I don’t want to lie to you.”

She lets out a little laugh, and he laughs too, relieved that she’s better, and that she doesn’t blame him.

“Kory,” he says, serious now, gently touching her hair. “Remember a little after we first met, when you told me I was afraid to say who I was?”

She answers with a light nod.

“Well, I feel like these days, you’re afraid to talk about what’s going on with you. With your powers.”

“I haven’t been off my game,” she argues.

“No, you haven’t, that’s not what this is about. I’m just worried. That’s all.”

She leans a little into the hand still softly stroking her hair. “I’m not scared to talk about it.” She says, her voice cracking. “I’m sad.”

“What are you sad about?”

There is so much in her eyes that he can’t decipher, so much pain that he can’t truly feel. And maybe she doesn’t want him to. He’d hidden who he really was from everyone for so long, because he didn’t think they’d like what they saw. But Kory is different, she wants to protect all of them, not just herself. It’s as clear as day. But no matter what she tells him, or doesn’t tell him, she has to know that he’s right here. 

“I felt them come back, my powers,” she says, looking at her hand, she tenses a bit, as if trying to do it again, to no avail. “Because when I was drugged, there was nothing holding me back but fear. Fear is nothing compared to having them all come true at once. That’s what happened to me three months ago.”

As she continues to talk, to unburden herself, he listens, and holds her hand and thumbs away her tears. And maybe this is the first step towards her finally healing. He wishes so hard that she didn't have to go through what she did back there for it to happen, but they’re past that. All that matters now is the two of them figuring it out, together.


End file.
